NamePros will be holding another live auction in their chat room on January 14th. This will be the second live auction in less than one month after more than a year hiatus. Last month’s auction had a pretty good turnout and overall sales topped $3300 with some decent names exchanging hands.
The queue for the upcoming live auction is now open and already has lots of junky looking names with a few good ones mixed in. For some reason this month’s auction has not yet even been announced sitewide at NP and I only realized the queue was open because I saw a link to it within a mods signature. I’m sure by Monday the word will be out to most forum members.
When I blogged about the live auction last month, it was already too late to submit any names, however that is not the case for the auction this coming Friday, so submit your names if you want them to be included! As hundreds of names will be submitted this week, not all will make it to the live auction which is explained on the queue page:
Names in the silent auction are up for bid in consideration for the next live auction event on December 17th. Auction lots receiving bids of 50% or more of their reserve price will be guaranteed to qualify for the live event. All auction lots have a reserve price that is considered binding if met or exceeded in either the silent or live auction.
As far as fees to submit your auction that information and all other auction rules can be found on the page where you add your name(s) to the queue, I took the auction fee info from that page and pasted it below:
Auction fees: There is no fee to list your domain in the NamePros Auction. Upon successful completion of your transaction, there is a 5% final value fee due with a $5 minimum. If your domain does not sell there is no fee.
The minimum reserve is $5. Reserves of $5 are an excellent way to encourage bidding and qualify your domain for live auction, but be mindful that the final auction results will be binding.
Ok domainers, no excuses this time.. Get your good names into this auction and start pre-bidding on names you like to ensure they do in fact make it to the live auction.
This queue is already full too, largely with names that won’t even reach their low $xx reserves. NamePros needs to create a better system.
I love the idea but they do need a better system or someone to say no the all of the bad names.
These auction venues need people in quality assurance who can properly value domains. Low quality names can kill a venue. I don’t even look at venues like eBay or BIDO because of the amount of sheer garbage not worth sorting through.
Unfortunately, most domain names submitted to any marketplace or auction venue aren’t worth the registration fee they were bought with. This is the nature of our business.
The NamePros auction queue automatically floats names with “action” to the top of the list as bids are placed. Also on auction day we have a list of good names with reasonable reserves, targeted towards buyers who are not interested in gem hunting through long lists of domains.
@RJ – I appreciate your efforts, and it’s great to have live auctions at NamePros. It’s just frustrating when all the available slots are quickly filled, mostly by low-quality domains that are unlikely to draw bids.
Maybe you’d consider having auctions for which domains would somehow have to qualify? For instance, their Estibot valuation must be at least X? (I know not everybody puts great faith in Estibot values; that’s just an example. Perhaps there’s a better way to quality domains.)
Just thinking off the top of my head ….